2015 goals

Holy cow, I can't believe I missed publishing my goals for 2015. Oh well better late than never and besides they have shifted ever so slightly from my January version. 

This year I am concentrating on building skills building and quilting 12 quilts(mix of lap, full, and queen). 

1. FMQ feathers

2. Circles 

3. Curves -(2) double wedding ring, orange peel

4. Appliqué portraits (2)

5. Hexagon (1) 

6. Kaleidoscope 

7. Improvisational 

8. FMQ geometric designs

9. Scrap quilt - colour study

10. Green leMoyne quilt

11. My own abstract quilts (2 designed)

Start quilting for others

Continue blogging 4 times per month

Make and Quilt charity/give away quilts (with learning goal in each) (30 in 3 years)

Christmas gift from GB

We saw this on the Sew Kind of Wonderful website. https://www.bloglovin.com/blog/post/4275983/3753915595 

She has given great directions in her tutorial.  I just warn you her directions are for an eight foot rack. It is huge!  

My husband decided to make it for me as a wonderful gift for Christmas.  And of course I had to get in there and put as many quilts as I had lying around up...even before it was anchored to the wall. 

2014 Review

My goals for 2014 were a bit ambitious for a beginner. 

Stats: I have finished 17 quilts this year :  

      lap quilts                          5

      Child/baby quilts.             5

      bed quilts (dbl/Qin)           4

      small test doll quilts          2

      Wall hanging.                   1

As follows 

1. Goal:  10 quilts for kids. Although these are not specifically for kids they are quilts that were not specifically identified:

  

     Done - brown tumbler for Keith 

     Done - orange and brown for Alma  

     Done - Kathleen's double bed child's quilt - done

     Done - Disappearing 9 patch  

     Done - rag quilt for baby Gus

     Done - one for Charles' baby  

     Done - baby hexi  - done  

     Done - green test quilt 

     Done - green doll quilt

     Done - green chevron lap quilt and a 

     Done - wall hanging - red

2.  Goal DONE my step dad's queen memory quilt. 

3.  Goal: DONE Make a lap rag quilt that I promised my son in law for his birthday. 

4.  Goal: DONE Make a queen quilt for my sister in law. 

6.  Goal: DONE quilts for Kasey and Rylee, two little preemies born April 14 and just now able to go home.  

7.  Goal: DONE Make pink lap quilt for mom.  

Other goals: 

5.  Design a series of modern design quilt sketches representing work and emotions at work.  I have designed about ten quilts with my little quilt studio.  Made two so far. 

8.  Blog weekly- started blogging in mid/late June 2014. I have done 25 blogs so on an average that is a blog a week. 

        

My present to my granddaughter (9 yrs old)

Last Christmas I sent my granddaughter a sewing machine.  In August, for her birthday, I sent her a beautiful jelly roll of material and instructions for a strip quilt.  My promise to her was that when she came to grandmas' at Christmas I would teach her how to use the long arm and she could quilt her first quilt. 

I had an ulterior motive (or two). First I wanted to pass on a love of mine ... My first love being sewing in general and now quilting.  Second I wanted to give her mother an opportunity to do something with her and/or to have something in common and build a bond with her step-dad's mom who is a great quilter.  Third I wanted to have the opportunity to develop a special bond between us.  

She and her mom sewed the top together and she was extremely excited albeit a bit intimidated with the giant machine. Despite some problems at first with tension and the side holders she took control of the machine and whizzed her way through it.  

We were all so excited that we forgot to take any good pictures and I had to parse this little one out of a phone video. It's not well focused but it will be a nice reminder.

After she was done I bound it and she slept with it Christmas Eve. 

Merry Christmas Sam!

Kathleen's quilt

I am so excited to finally be able to show you Kathleen's quilt.  Kathleen asked me to piece and quilt a fantasy quilt for her little daughter. She gave me some guidelines (her daughters initials within a circle on a plain band  and two bands of colour at the top) but basically left the quilting up to me. Because I have some material left I am making two pillow shams.

I incorporated a bunny, house, umbrella in the rain, and a kitten into a pattern of swirls, bubbles, flowers, leaves, and feathers.  The top border was swirls and the bottom border had a large pattern similar to one I saw on Angela Walter's blog.  

All the material is cotton. The batting is a cotton-poly and I used so-fine thread throughout. I backed it with a soft beige/brown Minky.  I bound it with the same material as in the stripes and I think it adds just the right extra pizzazz to the quilt. 

I love how the name band and bottom border turned out! 

Here is a picture of the centre panel.  

And another of how the panels look together.  

The back is beautiful too!  

I washed it and it looked wonderful but when transporting it it got creased.  I am hoping that with the next wash the wrinkles will hang out. 

Thank you Kathleen for allowing me to do this for you.  

My son's mystery quilt is morphing

Well I have been talking and showing you a few WIP pictures of my son' Christmas quilt.... Well just as a good mystery takes the reader through a series of clues to tease and misguide you, I am not sure  I will be ablle to complete this story until I actually have something bound and under the tree!  The newest clues to the final outcome are...1) I am running out of time and 2) the improperly cut star material has worked out fine for the star itself but not for the background pieces...I see a trip to the LQS in my future...but in the meantime I don't have enough material to replace the background. 

But, I have enough of another material for a chevron... 

Mmmmmmm... 

So here is what I have come up with as it is laid out on my design floor. There was more than enough material and it's all cut correctly ( so much better than the earlier fiasco! ) I see at least one piece that is out of place but that will be fixed soon enough.  I've got my fingers crossed. 

So this weekend it's all about Kathleen's quilt which I won't show you just in case she is peeking :-)  and putting this chevron together.  Despite the small frustrations I am loving every minute of "my son's quilt from ...." struggle.  The star quilt will still get done and I already have a taker or two for it, so all is not lost. 

Stay tuned for more highlights in my journey to uncover my son's real quilt !  

My son's quilt from ......

I designed his quilt, bought the material, and then cut all 600 pieces.  Everything good you say? That's what I thought but then two things went wrong. First I didn't buy enough material of one colour and so after I started cutting I decided to make the quilt pattern smaller. I was going to just take out a row and a column because the original was quite large. Some how I switched the size of the block as well, changing how everything fit together. Second error, I started putting it together but soon realized that half of the pieces that required the most material (same colour) was supposed to be cut on the reverse side of the fabric (similar to stars). Ahhhhhhhhh. 

So I changed the quilt to a LeMoyne star and am using what material I can and adding to it. It will be a similar size and similar colours. So then, I have never done a Lemoyne star before....you see where this is going?  I cut parallelograms rather than breaking the shapes into squares and triangles and had a terrible time with the first five stars until I watched a Craftsy class and figured it out. So now I have nice neat and clean points (not all perfect but getting there) and they even lie flat!  

So lessons started but obviously not learned...did I tell you I was trying to use as much of the cut pieces from the original start?  

Well here's what I have so far. I need 30 stars of three colour combos.  

On the plus side I am getting better at bringing the points together and ending up with flat stars...now I have to see if I can piece in the dark green background from the original or if I have to change it to another colour...white?  But that doesn't suit his life style. So it might be off to the fabric store..a 200km drive.  Black?  Mmmmm...I have enough white, black, or burgundy brown. 

What do you think?